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Illinois Governor To "Reflect" Before Death Penalty Decision

Professor and Director of the Mills Legal Clinic, Lawrence C. Marshall is quoted on limiting the application of the death penalty. Reuters filed the following story:

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn said on Wednesday he would "reflect" on the death penalty ban passed by the state legislature before deciding whether to sign it.

"Anyone in Illinois who has an opinion, I'm happy to listen and reflect and I'll follow my conscience," Quinn told reporters. If he agrees to the ban, Illinois will be the first state since 2009 to abolish executions.

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Lawrence Marshall, a Stanford Law School professor who had represented several freed Illinois Death Row inmates, said the problem with trying to limit the death penalty to "heinous" crimes is that the emotion surrounding those crimes can lead to errors.

"It's the very kind of passion that triggers the desire for the death penalty in a particular case that does have the potential to be blinding," said Marshall, who co-founded the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.
Among Marshall's clients was Rolando Cruz, who was on Death Row for years for the 1983 murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico, even though another man, Brian Dugan, admitted to the crime. After Cruz was freed, Dugan was convicted and is now on Death Row.